Apple's iMessenger App Finally Gets an Update

People use Apple's iMessage every single day and yet it hasn't been updated in years.
It's a great way for users to message friends on holiday or who live in
other countries as it works over the wifi like services like Facebook
Messenger. But now instant messengers are getting big and if Apple wants to compete, then they have to improve.

The new iMessage will be more open to developers so that Apple can keep
on improving it. For the moment though they already have some features
lined up. One of the things they have included is a predictive emoji keyboard and bigger emoji to make them stand out more.
This keyboard will turn the words you use into emoji which means that
your heartfelt message could become a stream of emoji. Apple Senior VP
Craig Federighi announced this feature with a quip that "the children of
tomorrow will have no understanding of the English language." That seems a little ridiculous, especially since today's teenagers don't seem impressed with this new feature.
Other new additions that could actually be fun include invisible ink
that renders a message or image blurry until you swipe the bubble, a
handwriting feature for when you want to actually write, bubble or
full-screen effects, videos playing right in the conversation and the
ability to use the camera when sharing images. Some of these features will be really useful and others can just make your messages stand out. There's also tapback so you can let people know you've seen their message even if you don't respond.

Apple has already lined up some developers to bring in extra features as well. This
will include things like stickers, the ability to easily order food
through the messenger and some other random features like one called
JibJab which you can't really explain. You'll just have to try it
out yourself when you can. More developers will come on board as Apple
are huge and a lot of users have iPhones, iPods and iPads, all of which
have the ability to use iMessage.

There isn't an exact date that this will be available, but it looks as if it'll be available with iOS 10.
I doubt this will be the last we hear of iMessage because now Apple has
decided to get their claws into messaging, they're going to be a big
competitor for Facebook Messenger and Google's apps.